Elements of Early Childhood that lead to success in learning and a happy child in life!

04/04/2012

Reclaiming Childhood

I discovered a gem
of a book, written by a developmental psychologist, with children in the school
district, who served on the school board for nine years in NJ. "Reclaiming
Childhood; Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society, William
Crain Henry Holt, and co.”

This
book was published in 2003 and its’ message is even more urgent today. He
thoughtfully lays out the back ground of theory regarding childhood development
and then debates the child-centered approach to education vs the standards
approach to education. This debate, presented by someone with a
ringside seat for policy making and parenting, who in fact wrote the textbook
on childhood development (2) is an invaluable cross-roads of theory and application with real
life outcomes.

From
this perspective, William Crain saw how far away from child directed learning
our obsession with the future is pulling us almost 15 years ago. He also saw
how the standards movement was robbing our children of the engrossing
experiences and quiet reflection that independent critical thinking requires.
With an eye to what the past and present have relinquished to the quest of
dominating the future, he calls out like Rousseau; who opposed feudal authority
and questioned the new faith in progress. In Rousseau's view, the forward march
of civilization was making things worse, not better. People were losing their
ability to fend for and think for themselves.

The
beginning of this book is a clearly written and entertaining overview of the
development of the early years of the child. "In an age when high-stakes
testing and high-stress lives dominate the headlines, William Crain reminds us
evocatively of a precious, irreplaceable time- the 100,000 hours of
childhood."-Howard Gardener.

Crain
lays out the early years of child-centered parenting. Full chapters include;
The Child as Dramatist, Naturalist, Artist, Poet, Linguist; what it looks like
and how to enhance the unfolding child in their natural growth. I will
highlight these chapters in another blog post. These areas of interest
well up from within the child and spark them passionately. Engaging with this
light from within enhances physical as well as intellectual growth; organically
building the human instrument. "Young children's enthusiasms are for
running, climbing, jumping, drawing, water play, exploring nature and
make-believe play. This enthusiasm comes from the children themselves. The
activities seem to enable them to actualize their growth" -Crain. I
believe this is the body tuning itself, becoming itself, sensory integration,
personality expression, the guiding vicissitudes of temperament. To interrupt
this pre-ordained timeline is to fundamentally interrupt what it is to become a
human being, to shortchange enjoyment of
mastery of one's instrument.

Children
enter the world with an inborn growth schedule that is the product of several
million years of biological evolution says Arnold Gesell's theory of biological
maturation. The child's developing instrument is truly a wonder. Their
developing nervous system a wonder of; biology, changing perceptions, and the
time line of human inheritances. To understand this development is to truly
understand the layers of being human. Thus, parents watch for children's
spontaneous interests and give the child opportunities to pursue them.

Howard
Gardener has shown that "between the ages of 3 and 8, children are
naturally motivated to develop their bodies and senses, the artistic side of
their personalities. Young children love to sing, dance, draw, make up poems,
and engage in dramatic play." (1) I would say the art of
being human.

John
Dewey, the first proponent of Project Based Learning said, "I believe that
interests are the signs and symptoms of growing power. I believe they represent
dawning capacities" (1) pg 169 I agree that the interests provide a spark for engagement which
signify intellectual development.

Dr.
Stanley Greenspan takes it to the next level taking into account
the "uniqueness of each child. A child's experience in large part
determines what she learns. To facilitate learning and appropriate mental
growth, experiences must be tailored to the child's 'individually different'
central nervous system." A full childhood is biologically driven to attain
a mature nervous system and with it full unique capacities.

"The
educator tries to see what capacities
the child herself feels a deep urge to master, and then tries to give the child
opportunities to do so."-Crain (1) "For the child-centered educator, tasks are arranged to meet
each child's developing needs- not some uniform, pre-determined
schedule."- Crain (1) p 159

"In
the child-centered view, nothing is more important than this spontaneous
enthusiasm for learning. It drives intellectual development. When children are
engrossed in task, they think deeply and fully and their minds expand. It is
therefore a great tragedy that conventional schools do so little to stimulate
this enthusiasm for learning."- Crain (1)

Child
centered learning allows the child to become what he will. "It is not
for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and forordained,
and he only holds the key to his own secret." Ralph Waldo
Emerson. "Children develop at different rates and possess unique
temperaments talents, and interests. Our task is to help the child develop his
or her own emerging capacities. Whether they fit our goals or not."(1)pg 156

The
developing autonomy of the child is the most important goal of the child
centered educator. "Montessori wanted to promote independent
learning. She never wanted children to have to turn to adults for assistance or
supervision. The child relied upon her unique perceptions of reality to answer
questions." Montessori's focus was to 'control' the environment, not
control the thoughts of children. She sought to enhance the discovery process
but not push it in a certain direction. "Kamii, a Piagetian constructivist
recommends that teachers even respect children's wrong answers. For it is
better for children to make mistakes than to believe that they must turn to an
adult to know what is correct." (1) pg 162

This
constructivist norm follows Rouseau's earlier observations explained here by
Crain. "Rousseau put forth that overly difficult instruction undermine's a
childs independence. When, to take a contemporary example, we assign a math
problem that is too difficult for her, she has no recourse but to turn to a
more knowledgeable person or to the back of the book to see if she got the
right answer. And because she doesn't fully understand the solution, she must
accept on faith whatever the 'smarter' person or the book says is true. She
learns to depend on external authority rather than to think for herself."(1) p 161 -Crain Independence of thought
and development of critically thinking should be the goal of educating, not
mimicry.

Standards Curriculum

Crain,
a developmentally psychologists bemoans that " Today's schools pay no
attention to the development sequence." If the job of schools is to enhance
development, why is it not being informed by how a child naturally develops? To
ignore the biology of human development is to not honor the child; nor enhance
their discovery, enthusiasms and capacities.

In
the Standards Curriculum, the high stakes testing that 'holds teachers
accountable' also prevents teachers from teaching to the needs of her students.
"Teachers can no longer make many judgements about tasks and activities
students need. The loss of flexibility is especially damaging to the child-centered
education. Child-centered teachers need the freedom to assess children's
interests and provide tasks on which children will work with energy and
enthusiasm. But with high-stakes tests on the horizon, teachers must put
engrossing activities aside. This preparation usually consists of drills and
exercises that children find extremely tedious. Test-driven education
undermines the child's love of learning." (1) Crain pg
164

Standards
based rely on external punishments and reward. "Parents must push children
to work harder for the sake of their future. Adults must be able to convince
children that their schoolwork has real consequences. Otherwise, says economist
and standards advocate James Rosenbaum, adults will be "like lion-tamers
without a whip."(1) Crain pg 160

If coercion is the
primary motivator, it is fundamentally disrespectful of a child's own
enthusiasms. Keeping the child in check and not allowing the blossoming of
capacities emblazoned by passions, and fed by physical energies. The
developing human spirit coupled with the dawning intellect is being held in
check.

Children learn through their
bodies, their eyes, their ears, movement, music. Children learn with joy when
they are allowed to. "Testing preparation typically requires
textbook instruction that drains the youngster of cognitive
energy." (1)

Children
learn joyfully partaking in a project; building a dog house, baking a cake,
sewing a costume, growing a garden. These experiences give context to the
information, the measurements, the words, the symbols that children are to
synthesize. But without project based learning, the symbols are unhinged from
the content, meaning and knowledge are lost. "High stakes testing makes even the
possibility of projects based learning impossible. What's more, as the
standards movement keeps pressing for more advanced instruction, students
increasingly struggle with material they only half understand. They must
memorize the answers that authorities say are correct rather than making their
own discoveries and figuring out problems on their own. Finally, the test
itself often produces feelings of chronic fear and dread. To anyone who
believes that there should be joy and excitement in learning, test driven
education is a disaster"-(1)
Crain pg 166 And he observed this long
before NCLB was being debated never mind implemented.

Diane
Ravitch, Former Assistant of Education who helped to champion the 'standards'
reform has repudiated the position she once so staunchly advocated. "In my
travels over the past two years, I have seen the wreckage caused by NCLB. It
has become the Death Star of American education. It is a law that inflicts
damage on students, teachers, schools, and communities."

She
continues in another interview: "NCLB cannot be fixed. It has failed. It
has imposed a sterile and mean-spirited regime on the schools. It represents
the dead hand of conformity and regulation from afar. It is time to abandon the
status quo of test-based accountability and seek fresh and innovative thinking to
support and strengthen our nation's schools." She has
indeed written a book entitled, "The Death and Life of the Great
American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education."
NY, Basic Books, 2010.And
yet NCLB is not dead yet and will take a long time to undue the damage it has
inflicted.

I
believe William Crain's "Reclaiming Childhood' makes the case for where to
turn for this fresh innovative thinking. He turns to the well-spring of
enthusiasm within the children themselves, Child-Directed Learning. This
is, of course, if the collective goal of education is to
bring out the full capacities of children, so that they may participate fully
in civil society, and contribute to the common good. The participation in
society that requires communication, debate, fully vetted public opinion, and
political action that democracy requires.

Dr.
Crain speaks for the developmentally appropriate child-led
learning. "Rational goal-directed modes of thinking are valuable but
so too is the child- like delight in the world as it unfolds before us. To
devalue the childhood experiences is to short change thinking itself." (1)

A
child is learning about his world using his entire instrument, checking
observations, recording cause and effect. They work on problems in a holistic
fashion and they need time to process these experiences.
"Children need
stretches of unhurried time to create imaginary dramas, to draw or compose
poems, to wander alongside a brook, seeing what they can find. Indeed, children
need the opportunity to get in touch with nature's own rhythms as when a child
sits in a day dreamy state by a pond, feeling a oneness with the water. In the
Berkeley schoolyard, the children said that the nature area invited them to sit
quietly, listen to the birds, look at the trees, and just think. What the
children thought about we do not know. My guess is that they sometimes thought
about their personal problems, and these problems seemed smaller in the context
of the beautiful and intricate web of life surrounding them. In any case, just
sitting and thinking was calming and helpful, and the thinking required
unhurried time." (1) pg 152 A bucolic notion in this
modern world, it may seem. But now it is rapidly becoming an unanswered
biological imperative, if we are to develop the next leaders of the human race.

John Holt also advocated for the full development
of children in body, spirit, and intellect. "No
human right, except the right to life itself, is more fundamental than this. A
person's freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic
than his freedom of speech. If we take from someone his right to decide what he
will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought. We say, in effect,
you must think not about what interests and concerns you, but about what
interests and concerns us."-John Holt

Dewey
also believed that an educated child should have full use of his capacities to
bring to the democratic commons and participate fully in the democratic process
of communication, debate, and political action. Independent thought based
on individual perceptions of reality are balanced within this democracy in
action.

Dewey
asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending
voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion accomplished
by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the
latter being accountable for the policies they adopt. In his eyes, the
purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined
set of skills, but rather the realization of one’s full potential and the
ability to use those skills for the greater good. He notes that "to
prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means
to train him so that he will have the full and ready use of all his
capacities" (1897,
p. 6).My pedagogic creed.

I am
beginning to be of the opinion that the NCLB has perverted this notion of full
and ready use of capacities. That by pushing children along to showcase their
incompetence is a way to make the authority figure loom larger as the only one
who is informed. High school students are barely
reading at a fifth grade level, well below what an informed electorate
needs to engage in public debate.

If
freedom of thought is truly the bedrock of democracy than it should start with
a child's freedom to discover for himself the wonders of the world. To defend
the 100,000 hours of childhood, when a child is honing their physical
instrument and allowing for changing perceptions that developing maturity
requires. Developmentally appropriate does not mean we
are losing the global initiative race to the top. It means we are building a
foundation of human capital that may think in disciplined and creative ways to
solve the problems that lay before them. Critical thinking, problem solving,
and clear observations of reality are what the future requires. Why are we
educating them for the opposite of this?

Noam
Chomsky posted an article just
last week in which he argued the public school is 'Failure By
Design";"Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that political leaders call for
popular education because they fear that "This country is filling up with
thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from
our throats." But educated the right way: Limit their perspectives and
understanding, discourage free and independent thought, and train them for
obedience."A chilling assessment of the legacy of NCLB and defunding
public universities.

(1)
"Reclaiming Childhood; Letting Children Be Children in Our
Achievement-Oriented Society, William Crain Henry Holt, and co.".

(2)
"Theories and Devolopment: Concepts and Applications, William Crain
(Prentice-